To mark the death of conductor Louis Lane, I recently shared on another site my transfer of Lane's 1961 Epic LP, "Music for Young America," made with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, at that time the summer incarnation of the Cleveland Orchestra. Lane was the longtime assistant, associate and resident conductor of the Cleveland ensemble, during the Szell years.
I thought I might also make it available here, together with a substantial bonus of more music by Cleveland-related composers (see below). |
| Louis Lane |
The performances in Lane's program of music by conservative American composers are finely judged and clean cut, a fitting tribute to an excellent musician and the superb Cleveland ensemble.
It may be a little ironic that the chosen “Music for Young America” was composed by five older composers, two of whom had already passed away at the time of the recording. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the works themselves. The most familiar is Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture,” followed by the suite from Gian Carlo Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Wallingford Riegger’s “Dance Rhythms,” unlike many of his other works, is tonal.
The second side is devoted to two Cleveland composers. Herbert Elwell, longtime critic of The Plain Dealer, is represented by his most frequently performed work, the ballet suite from "The Happy Hypocrite." Finally, there is “The Old Chisholm Trail” from Arthur Shepherd’s suite “Horizons” (I believe Shepherd designated it as his Symphony No. 1), a relatively early example of Americana, dating from 1926.
To make the Cleveland connection complete, the informative liner notes are by Klaus Roy, longtime program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and himself a notable composer.
LINK to Music for Young America (April 2025 remastering)
Music by Herbert Elwell and Ernest Bloch
Now to the bonus disc - a private recording of Elwell's "Blue Symphony," a setting of John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" from the 1940s, together with Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet, written in 1923, when the composer was head of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
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| Herbert Elwell |
The worthy performances are by the Feldman String Quartet, with soprano Elizabeth V. Forman and pianist Gloria Whitehurst Phillips. The recording was made for the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in 1962.
LINK to music by Elwell and Bloch (April 2025 remastering)
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ReplyDeleteBecause of the limits of 4096 characters I am cutting my post (involving a downloadable link below) into 2 parts; no. 1 follows:
DeleteBuster: your inclusion of these transfers under your blog link for "Ernst Bloch" has given me the impetus, and excuse, for adding perhaps MY own most precious personal LP transfer of all times: Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1, with George Schick (piano) and the CSO under Rafael Kubelik, the famous early "Living Presence" Mercury LP that is number MG-50001, from 1951 (my pressing was c.1954-55.) The overside is the Bartok MFSPC, restored personally by original recordist/producer C. R. Fine's wife, the brilliant Wilma Cozart Fine, for Mercury CD issue no. 289 434 378-2. But, rather than reissue this valuable record AS COLLECTORS WOULD WANT IT, the eccentric Philips producer, one TD (name redacted, as he's the most over-reactive, vicious, and insulting contributor to the newsground rec.classical.music.recordings, and would strip the epidermous from my body and roast me over the Pit of Hell), chose to cross-couple two Merc LPs, the Bartok with the not-terribly-appropriate Mussorgsky Pictures, on Merc. MG 50000. As far as I know, the actual original master of the Bloch has NOT been released in a W. Cozart Fine modern restoration--I could be wrong, so corrections will be appreciate.
The popular, excellent Shellackophile blog (largely at my request for the full album) produced a nice, usable transfer some years back of the Mercury "Wing" reissue that paired the Gould "Spirituals" by Dorati, with this Kubelik Bloch record --
https://shellackophile.blogspot.com/2012/06/bloch-and-gould-on-mercury-wing.html
--but, unfortunately, the cheapy-reissue of the sixties did not have the full, rich sound of the original post-1954 RIAA pressing of the Bloch, which came into my hands a few years earlier.
Now, as to why I am proud of this personal transfer of the Bloch:
Mercury Records' press-agentry always insisted that "no electronic monitoring of levels has been done at any time"; i. e., no limiters or gain-riding adjustments were ever made during their recordings. THIS IS WRONG; I'd hate to call it a "lie"...but from my perspective, as a recording engineer of live orchestras, it is not the actual historical truth.
I can HEAR automatic peak-limiting on MANY old Mercury records. For example: on MG50001's Bartok side, the dynamics are not only reduced at the top extremes by an electronic peak-limiter; but also there is HAND-ADJUSTMENT of levels, particularly the soft passages (done, presumably, by disk cutting engineer George Piros.) These constraints are NOT present in the authentic, purist WCF transfer on the Mercury CD cited above. - end of part one of 2 parts, by 8H Haggis
-part two of two parts, by 8H Haggis
DeleteIn the Bloch, there is a sustained string octave unison passage, an 'A', that is found in the opening movement (in my file, from about 1:10 seconds to 1:18 seconds.) On the disk, that passage PULSATES in volume; but this "swelling hairpin", up and down and up again in volume, is NOT in the score, and NOT played by any orchestra that way: it's merely a sustained steady-amplitude note. It's not merely a 'conducting affectation' a la Stokowski: it's merely an electrical gain artifact that is TOO sharply controlled to be caused by a desire to have the basses dig into PART of the note, and then relax their bow-pressure. (I hate to say "trust me", but though I'm not a bass player, I've recorded LOTS of live concerts and know what happens with the sound envelope in the sonic mix of direct & incident sounds picked up by microphones.)
On the phonograph disks issues, the erratic gain modulation is caused by what is known as a 'broadband peak limiter', responding only to the PEAK electrical signal of ANY frequency, in the moment. The bass energy is somewhat variable, due to hall reverb: and the limiter FOLLOWS that variation, further "ducking" the volume on the record; then the instant that peak is finished, the limiter "releases" and the gain suddenly RISES; and this happens a few times ... just on this ONE note. Drives me CRAZY. There are also other passages in the whole piece where this is evident.
Mercury used an Ampex 300 deck to make the master record; but the rest of their 'chain' was a turnkey Fairchild system, developed and refined for the purpose of making optical film soundtracks, C. R. Fine's "day job". The infamous Fairchild broadband and high frequency peak limiters were NOT bypassed; they affect what was cut onto the Mercury disks. When the actual session tapes were transferred by Wilma, thru the original tube console, the rest of the Fairchild antiquated junk was bypassed--including the cutting lathe and its driving amp: so the CDs have far more "open" and uncongested sound--unless Fine's master tapes were flattened out and saturated (as was often the case.)
I became so irritated at the artifacts of compression on the Mercury LP that I made MY OWN disk to CD transfer about a decade ago, using a plugin that I personally created for CoolEdit 2000, the '8H Haggis unlimiter'. This can be tuned for compression ratio and triggering frequency band; and I adjusted it to UNDO that "pulsation" and other similar effects on this record side.
Here is *my* transfer, as a FLAC (available for only 30 days, expiring about 9/30/18)
https://www111.zippyshare.com/v/qJVpo4XP/file.html
It is my own favorite performance of the piece, though it was not an 'imprint' caused by hearing ONLY this one in my earliest years as a phonofile. I simply have come to believe that it's the most *emotional* and expressive and 'deep' performance that one can imagine: a bit grave, a tad broad--but always profoundly moving.
8H Haggis
Thanks, 8H - quite an interesting discussion. Peak limiting is something I've never been able to counteract convincingly. I'm interested to hear what you have done.
DeleteThank you, Buster! I had no idea of Lane's passing. I have fond memories of his conducting in Atlanta - he played second fiddle to Robert Shaw as the ASO's conductor during the 70s but I considered him more vital than Shaw in orchestral repertoire. (Shaw, of course, excelled in choral works.)
ReplyDeleteHi Bryan - I agree!
ReplyDeleteHello Bryan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this upload and the always fascinating notes appended here.
Growing up in Liverpool in the 1960s, on a Sunday night at 9 pm the family would always listen to "Your Hundred Best Tunes" for an hour of popular classical music. A regular piece on that programme was Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" played by Rafael Druian and the Cleveland Sinfionetta conducted by Louis Lane - this was really the only recording of the piece, way before it became a "household name". Have always loved that piece of music that Louis Lane introduced me to.
Thanks for sharing your love of music with us.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
Some wonderful music, Buster. It's a shame that Lane wasn't more widely known or recorded. I appreciate nuggets like this, as I have long been a Cleveland fan as well. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteFor me, this is a great discovery. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks Buster! Looking forward to discovering this.
ReplyDeleteThanks Buster! Looking forward to discovering this.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the Epic LP of American pieces, and the Columbia LPs of Mozart's Dvt No. 17 and Beethoven's Prometheus Ballet, my favorite performance by Louis Lane is the following live reading of Berwald -- a particularly gripping one. The notes contained in the folder I have on my hard drive say this:
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------
BERWALD:
Sinfonie Singulière (26:29)
(April 27, 1972)
Cleveland Orchestra
Louis Lane, conductor
Severance Hall
Cleveland, Ohio
Live performances – dates as indicated
Selections from a program in tribute to Louis Lane (1923-2016), who was on the conducting staff of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1947 to 1973, and who made a number of recordings with the orchestra. I did not include the Scarlatti-Tommasini Good-Humored Ladies Suite, which was from a commercial recording and is still available.
WCLV.org
FLAC
------------------------------
https://www107.zippyshare.com/v/4wN74JZP/file.html
FLAC file, zipped, 131 MB. File expires around 9-3-18.
8H Haggis
Correction...file expires around 9--30---18, so you have a month.
ReplyDelete8HH